Motivation and the Emotional Regulation of Activity in Preschoolers

摘要

The transition from early to preschool age involves profound changes not only in children's intellectual sphere but their motivational-emotional sphere as well. Throughout childhood, while mastering the simplest types of practical and mental activity, children also assimilate social values, norms, and rules of behavior and relations with other people that, if instruction is well-designed, becomes their own property, takes on "personal meaning" (Leontiev, 1981, p. 299), and is transformed into the preschooler's socially directed motives for activity and behavior. The process of transforming knowledge about the norms governing relationships with others into motives for children's actual behavior and the role of emotions in this process has yet to be sufficiently studied, which makes it difficult to design scientifically grounded methods for managing children's social development.